Meta Appoints ChatGPT Co-Creator as Chief Scientist of Superintelligence Lab

NEW YORK, July 25 (Reuters) – Meta Platforms (META.O) has appointed Shengjia Zhao, co-creator of ChatGPT, as chief scientist of its Superintelligence Lab, CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced on Friday, as the company intensifies its efforts in advanced AI.

“In this role, Shengjia will set the research agenda and scientific direction for our new lab, working directly with me and Alex,” Zuckerberg wrote in a post on Threads, referring to Meta’s Chief AI Officer Alexandr Wang, whom Zuckerberg hired from the startup Scale AI when Meta acquired a significant stake in the company.

Zhao, a former research scientist at OpenAI, co-created ChatGPT, GPT-4, and several of OpenAI’s smaller models, including versions 4.1 and o3.

He is one of several researchers who have recently transitioned from OpenAI to Meta, reflecting a broader talent competition as Zuckerberg aggressively recruits from rivals to close the gap in advanced AI. Meta has been offering some of Silicon Valley’s most lucrative compensation packages and striking startup deals to attract top talent—a strategy prompted by the underwhelming performance of its Llama 4 model.

Meta recently launched the Superintelligence Lab to consolidate its work on the Llama models and advance its long-term goals for artificial general intelligence. According to the Threads post, Zhao is a co-founder of the lab, which operates independently from FAIR, Meta’s established AI research division led by deep learning pioneer Yann LeCun.